Pages

Sunday, July 17, 2011

Anatomy of a miscue, Howard calls, looks, and then just before the ball drops he glances at Utley

To say the Phillies were sloppy in yesterday’s loss to the Mets would be an understatement. It probably caused Cole Hamels to pitch using his ‘mad’ side. When Cole visits his ‘mad’ side the results are almost never good. Starting the the maddening day for Cole was Ryan Howard and his calling for a fly ball and then watching it fall to the turf between him and Chase Utley. Hamels let Howard know what he thought of that play in a really loud way, something you don’t see all that much from a fellow player. Even a fan sitting at home had a bit of trouble seeing Cole uncork his displeasure at Howard, but this is baseball and sometimes emotion can get the best of you.

Another play had Raul Ibanez trying to find the grip on a ball hit to right field, he couldn’t find the grip at all while two runs scored and the Phillies were starting to help the Mets dig a big hole. The papers will say it was Cole getting ‘roughed up’ but really this was a big team effort on getting roughed up in the end.

All of these defensive miscues and combined with the Phillies not even being able to put a run up on the board until the 7th inning, spelled defeat for them on Fox Saturday baseball. As good as the Phillies look sometimes, they still remind you of their ‘other’ side on games like this at times. Cole Hamels falls to 11-5 on the day.

The two teams will battle it out again this afternoon at 1:10 PM from Citi Field.